Saturday, October 1, 2011

Live Blogging Nationwide Series From Dover (ESPN2 - 3PM ET)

Once again this week, the normal college football scenario is in place. Once the noon ET game is over, NASCAR will start on ESPN2 from Dover.

Nicole Briscoe will have Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty in the Infield Pit Studio for the pre-race show. Daugherty has reduced himself to a cheerleader this season while Rusty continues to be conflicted between his own personal feelings on topics within the sport and his desire to function as a TV analyst.

It's Marty Reid with Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree in the TV booth to call the race at 3:30PM ET. Reid is not having a very good time since being removed from the Sprint Cup Series package in favor of Allen Bestwick. NASCAR is not his sport and it's very clear ESPN made the right move.

Nationwide Series qualifying was carried on SPEED earlier in the day and SPEED analyst Elliott Sadler is on the pole. The field is diverse and this might be the best race of the weekend. Lots of different agendas at work on the track.

Dr. Jerry Punch, Jamie Little, Vince Welch and Dave Burns are on pit road. This group might be busy as Dover has a nasty reputation of big wrecks in the Nationwide Series races. There is no room to spin into the infield and no mercy on the highbanks.

ESPN continues to offer what they designed several years ago and that is "hyper-tight" coverage. Accidents and passing on this track happen so quickly TV networks traditionally kept the camera angles wide and simply worked to cut the cameras ahead of the pack. It should be interesting to see if ESPN uses the coverage today as a test for Sunday's Cup production.

This race is available to Time Warner, Bright House and Verizon FiOs users through the Watch ESPN app and there are free team scanners for fans at the NASCAR.com website.

This post will serve to host your comments on the NASCAR on ESPN coverage of the Nationwide Series from Dover. To add your TV-related opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

This series is dying a slow death with no signs of getting better. NASCAR took the small tracks like South Boston, Nashville Speedway, etc. out of the series and put the cup tracks on the schedule. The Cup drivers are also dominating now rather than cup drivers driving in the series on a sporadic basis.

They need to ditch the pit studio for the NNS races.. How many times to we have to tell them that less is more. Use it for prerace or a rain delay.. Other than that, leave it alone. You don't need it. Really, it's not adding anything to the telecast.

Perhaps ESPN is mis-using their talent. Poor Brewer, who has more NASCAR knowledge in one toe than Big Brad has in his entire body, and far less annoying than Raving Rusty, is stuck giving us scripted responses from the Tech Garage.

Put Brewer in the Studio with Nicole, reassign Brad to be ESPN's version of Rutledge Wood, and put Rusty in something like the "Craftsman Driver's Dashboard" where he gives explanations of stuck throttles, and the favorite flavors in driver's water bottles.

I agree RWar24. For years we had just the booth guys at the top. Then they add an infield studio with the TV "Stars"(?) and pretend they're more important than the drivers? Gimme a break! NOT NEEDED! Does not add anything worth while.

I agree JD, I'm just amazed the way they handled that. It was a tabloid style report. The cameraguy had to run faster than Chad to see his face, only for Chad to feel awkward and look everywhere but the cameraguy stalking him. Do they have to cover NASCAR like that?

The Suits at Fox prove once again .. they don't know what theyare doing. Example telling us that mikey isjust great .. and giving us more ofhim along the way. What we need is LESS OF MIKEY !I read their press release. Do notEAT before you read it.